Equilibrium
by Crystal Silvera
Summary: It only took so much to send someone to the brink of death. Really, they should have been more cautious—errantry, after all, does come with risk. K/N. Co-written with ObeliskX.
1. Chapter 1

I. Prologue 

* * *

_Errantry comes with risk._

 _We know that just as well as the next wizard. We've had more than enough reminders, more than enough warnings. But the Powers and Fortune herself always seemed to favor us._

 _We'd been pushed near the edge so often that I started . . . to get used to it. What's worse, I even became reckless. Just a bit. And this tiny bit turned out to be enough._

 _Who knew?_

 _And then came the day when our luck ended. The day our lives were turned upside down—literally._

 _It was entirely my fault._

* * *

 **For of all sad words of tongue or pen,**

 **the saddest are these: it might have been.**

 **—John Greenleaf Whittier**

* * *

 _What if I replaced "it might have been" with "took you long enough"?_

Juanita Callahan made an exaggerated face at the book, sticking a makeshift bookmark between the pages and shutting it. Silently she asked the Powers what she'd done to deserve this.

"That's not funny, Bobo."

The distant amusement of the peridexis told her that whatever dwelt in her mind thought otherwise.

Nita closed her eyes and withdrew beneath her covers with a silent groan. _The embodiment of wizardry in my head is_ mocking _me. About my . . ._ And then, not for the first time that week, she found that she had neither the words nor the energy to find a smart retort to what everyone seemed to be mocking her about.

As of right now, the first week of summer, Juanita Callahan had decided that her stance on the issue was officially _I'll deal with this later, when I've slept some more._

As if to annoy her even further, muffled thumping echoed somewhere near in the house, building up to a door slam. Nita tried to ignore it, but the racket that was Dairine Callahan became rather impossible to ignore when the next door slam announced her entrance.

"Oh good Powers, you're not _asleep_ , are you?"

Nita kept her eyes closed. _Why, Dairine, why . . ._ With every atom of her being, she willed for the voice's owner to leave.

 _Ahem. Rude._

 _Not_ you _, Bobo, don't be_ —

"Oh stop pretending, I _heard_ you talking to Bobo earlier. Seriously, get up."

Something shook Nita's shoulder painfully in a too-tight grip: Dairine's hand. Nita winced, but refused to open her eyes and burrowed deeper into her covers.

"I am _not_ giving up my precious nap time at _your_ beck and call."

Dairine's scoff sounded more like a cat spitting. " _Right._ 'My beck and call.' Let me know what universe _that's_ taking place in so I can move in."

 _"Daaaairiiiiiine . . ."_

"What, are you hibernating under there?"

Whatever witty retort Nita had been formulating in her mind was cut short by an abrupt shock of cold as Dairine yanked off her covers. "Come on, dear sister, rise and shine!"

Nita groaned and pulled her knees closer to her forehead with her back to Dairine, refusing to be ordered around so easily. "What for?"

The stillness that followed was highly uncharacteristic. Nita opened her eyes and rolled over to face her sister. "Dairine. _What for?_ "

Dairine opened her mouth to say something, but the only thing that came out was a deep breath. Nita stared. Dairine crossed her arms tightly and glanced towards a wall.

Spot—loyal to Dairine as ever—trundled his way onto Nita's desk and said, very evenly, "Dairine requests your assistance with an occurrence on Wellakh."

Nita sat up.

She eyed Dairine wearily, trying to match up Spot's words with what she saw. Dairine, for one, was not seething at Nita or Spot. Was not royally annoyed with Nita or Spot. And she refused to meet Nita's gaze, which only meant her fury was directed at one person only: Dairine herself.

 _This better be good . . ._

"What is it, runt?"

There was a tenseness to Dairine, even as she stood there in her usual garb of snarkiness and folded arms. The tenseness flickered in her voice as she replied, "It's not huge. Just that their kernel needs a bit of fixing."

Nita blinked. "Um. Okay. What kind of—"

"You should probably call Kit, too." Dairine began to take her leave with as much dignity as she had left.

"Why?"

Dairine paused, halfway in and halfway out, her back to Nita. She turned around, her lips thin. "Ponch's leash spell. I have . . . a feeling that we might need it."

Nita blinked again.

"I _know_ the leash is gone, don't look at me like that. I just need the spell, okay?"

Nita reached into the air and pulled out her manual. "On it." She flipped it open and began paging to the messaging section, expecting to hear Dairine's trademark ruckus as she left. When page turning was the only sound in the house, Nita looked up, surprised to see Dairine still standing there, staring at an invisible point on the floor.

"You okay there?" Nita asked, slightly concerned.

Dairine's head jerked up sharply, instantly defensive. Nita held up a hand, bowing her head over her manual.

"Save it. Now please, go get me some tea or something."

Dairine rolled her eyes and pounded down the stairs.

* * *

"I mean . . . I'm okay with it, but do you know _why_?"

"That's _why_ I'm asking you in the first place. Can you come over? We'll go over the runt's plan. Then both you and I can find out why Dair's being so sensitive about all this stuff."

"Well, it could just be the Callahan trait of being physically unable to ask for favors—"

"You coming or not?"

A laugh. "You're on."

* * *

Dairine didn't question Nita's choice of manual voice-call over mind link, but Nita personally felt that she would be less conflicted if Dairine _did_ question her like she normally would.

 _She's too good at this for her own good,_ Nita griped silently.

 _Good at what?_

 _Reading people._

Bobo seemed more bemused than anything. _And why does that matter this particular time?_

 _Because . . ._ And to her faint horror, Nita found she could hardly explain herself to Bobo. _Because it's about Kit, this time. And Dairine_ knows _. Of all the seven-something-billion kinds of people I could have gotten for a sister, I have to get the one who's too smart for her own good_ —

"Hey, _Ni-_ taaa!"

She sighed. _Of_ all _the seven-something-billion kinds of people . . ._

 _"What?"_

"Check your manual!" Dairine yelled from somewhere distant. _Probably the fridge._

 _"Why?"_

"Because!"

"Is that code for 'I'm too lazy to explain what's going on so I sent you a precis via manual'?"

"Duh!" There was a slam downstairs. "And who the heck even says _via_ anymore?"

Nita sighed and dragged her manual closer to her, paging through to the messaging portion. _Bobo, is there another universe where Dairine_ isn't _a wizard with the annoyance level she's got? And also, what happened to the notification spell I set?_

 _No comment on the other universe. But your notification's fine; should be going off about now._ And sure enough, the blue notification spell-light blinked into existence. Nita pinched it out with one hand, the other still rifling through her manual.

It was purely by chance that Nita had to flip through the local listing to get to the messaging. It was purely by chance that she caught sight of her listing, purely by chance that her eyes happened to read the two words that declared her wizardly status.

But then again, there were probably no chances. Not with these Powers.

* * *

Nita double-checked the name. Triple-checked.

She took a deep breath that did nothing and marked the page with her fingers before launching herself out of her room.

* * *

 _"Dairine!"_

"What!"

Nita flung herself around the final step of the stairs and flapped her manual in front of her sister's face. Dairine's bemused eyebrows over her Star Wars mug only served to infuriate Nita more. _Of_ all _the seven-something-billion kinds of_ people— _!_

There was a pause as Nita tried to gather the right words to express her maddening confusion, which rather took the edge off her moment of blazing fury.

(Dairine, hidden from Nita's view, raised her eyebrows even higher as she read Nita's status listing on the page before smirking. It was such a laughable situation, really. Only, Dairine had lived with Nita long enough to know that if she uttered a single sound that even slightly resembled a laugh _she_ would be the one thrown onto Pluto instead of her bed.)

"Did you— Is this—" Nita scowled and snapped her manual shut under her arm, once more revealing Dairine's coolly baffled expression. _She's taking after Roshaun more and more every day._

She pointed an accusing finger at Dairine. "Am I on active because of _you_ or—because . . . because there are no coincidences?"

Dairine finished the last of whatever was in her mug and crossed her arms. "If you think that my asking for your help is what put you on active, then you've got another think coming. And besides, it's not like I went up to the Powers and specifically _asked_ Them to put you on active, so _calm_ yourself." A rather curious expression crossed her face. "Is that even possible?"

Nita made a huffing noise. "It's practically impossible to calm myself when that mug of yours is literally one joint away from smashing on the floor." Dairine glanced down at her crossed arms to the aforementioned mug, having not even realized she'd been dangling the thing by its handle on one finger.

Dairine threw Nita a royal eyeroll and slipped it onto the counter. "Have you even _read_ the precis yet, or have you been too busy fuming?"

Nita countered with a glare of daggers. "Well, excuse _me_ for not reading the precis when—"

"Nita, Dairine, I can hear you guys from out here. Could one of you, y'know, _open the door_ please?"

 _That's Kit_ —

And again the words flew through her mind, quick and light:

 _Took you long enough_

Nita threw Dairine a look that clearly said she was done with the conversation for today, but she'd hear about it later. "Sorry—coming!"

Dairine scooped up her mug and left for the fridge. Out of the range of Nita's fury, she muttered quietly to herself, "Since when did Kit knock anyway?" _  
_

* * *

 _Does he remember? Or was it all a hallucination from being wiped on Mars?_

 _I remember he was influencing the dream for sure_ — _but what if that wasn't an influence? Was it from my dream? After all there are those things you think you know in dreams . . ._

 _Or was it all just part of backlash from everything that happened on Mars?_

 _Did he mean what he said?_

 _Or_ —

"Nita, did you hear _any_ of what I just said?"

Nita blinked. Dairine had _good Powers what is going_ on _in that madhouse brain of hers_ written all over her face, plus a glare that reminded Nita of a bird of prey that was perched by their kitchen counter. "You weren't even listening, were you?"

"Sure I was. Uhh— Something about—" _Crap. Bobo?_

 _Yes I kept track. But don't make this a habit. . . . Never-before-seen flash floods seen all over the planet_ —

"—lots of flash floods—"

— _spontaneous earthquakes even though tectonic plates should be dormant_ —

"—random earthquakes, even though the tectonic plates should be dormant—"

— _because of the Lone One's interference with the kernel.  
_

"—all thanks to That One's messing around with the kernel." Nita leaned back in the couch and raised her eyebrows at Dairine. "Am I right?"

Dairine rolled her eyes in response, which Nita interpreted to be a yes. "Just making sure."

"Wait. So you're thinking of just"—here Kit gestured vaguely with his hands—"taking them all out for a quick interplanetary vacation while the kernel gets fixed?"

"That's one way of putting it," Dairine muttered. "But yeah. 'Rafting,' right?"

"That's . . . a lot of energy, runt," Nita said, biting her lip.

Dairine sighed, and not for the first time that day Nita noticed the darkness under her eyes. And the _weariness_ —it pulled at her stature, dragged her down, made her fragile and ready to blow away in a million little pieces at a moment's notice. _Which is very un-Dairine._ "I know. That's why we're going to channel it from their sun . . . So that won't be a problem, because I can handle that."

Nita frowned at her. "Dair. Are you sure? You look . . . really, really tired." _Better put that out there before she gets the energy to blast me to bits for saying so._

Dairine shrugged, rolling her eyes in classic Dairine style. "Doesn't matter. What _does_ matter is that the Lone One's messing with Wellakh, and I'm not going to just let it sit. Powers apparently aren't either, if They've put you on active." She glanced at Kit, raising an eyebrow. "Are you?"

Kit blinked. "Am I what?"

"On active, duh." Dairine narrowed her eyes slightly. "What's up with you two today?"

Kit looked away, shifting his feet slightly. Nita fought to maintain a blank stare as the temperature seemed to suddenly rise by a few hundred degrees. "Uhh. The usual? Being dragged onto yet another errantry even though we'd just wrapped up one about a day ago?"

Dairine sighed and leaned back against the counter. "Yeah. . . . Sorry about that."

Kit straightened to look at Dairine, his eyes wide. "Did the great esteemed almighty Dairine Callahan just say _sorry_?"

"Don't push it, Your Kitness," Dairine retorted. "Anyway, yeah. It isn't as huge an intervention compared to that one, though—next to the Mars incident, this should be a piece of cake. I'm not even sure it's life-threatening, to be honest, but since it's Wellakh I'd rather be safe than sorry." She straightened, stretched, then gathered up Spot from the floor and began heading towards the stairs. "I'm gonna start getting ready, then . . . Can we meet at Mela's closet in half an hour? The quicker we get started, the quicker we can get this over with."

Kit made a face. "This'll take the whole day, won't it?"

"I'm hoping not, but it might. Bring lunch." With that, Dairine disappeared up the stairway.

Nita rolled her eyes and began heading after her when the ghost of a voice flitted across her mind.

 _Took you long enough . . ._

She froze and turned on the stairs to face Kit, who was still standing in the living room with his arms crossed, frowning thoughtfully at the floor.

"Uh, Kit . . ."

He met her gaze, looking slightly startled. "Yeah?"

"After the Mars thing, did you . . ." Her voice faltered, and she cleared her throat. "Did you have a weird dream?"

Kit blinked before tipping his head slightly to the side. "A weird dream?" He grinned at her then, and to Nita's annoyance she felt herself coloring slightly. "No . . . At least, I didn't think it was _weird_ necessarily."

She laughed at that, a little too nervously for her own liking. "I just wasn't sure if it was all just a product of my messed-up imagination or if it was Aurilelde still influencing things between us or— Actually, I don't know _what_ I thought . . ." _Oh good Powers That Be in a bucket what am I_ saying—

To her surprise, Kit laughed just as nervously as she had and looked down. "Well, you're not the only one."

Nita breathed in.

 _Might as well get this over with . . .  
_

She steeled herself, and then:

"Do you mean what you said, in the dream?"

Kit looked up at that, and Nita realized with a shock that he was blushing slightly. "Yeah, I did." He paused, then said, "Did you?"

Relief crashed over Nita in one enormous wave, sweeping away all the feeling in her legs.

 _Took you long enough took you long enough took you long enough_

Dimly she realized that Dairine probably had heard all this drama unfold below her. (Dimly she realized that, quite frankly, she didn't care.) Dimly she realized that she'd walked back down the steps so that she was standing directly in front of Kit, matching his stance of folded arms and mild expression.

"Would I be asking if I didn't?" Nita said, raising an eyebrow.

Kit raised an eyebrow back at her. "I dunno, Neets . . . You sounded like you were worried I was gonna blast you or something—" He was cut off by his own laughter and Nita's punch to his shoulder.

"I was just embarrassed!" she said defensively.

 _About_ what _?_ Kit asked silently, trying to force down his laughter.

 _I wasn't sure if you, y'know,_ agreed _,_ Nita replied, rolling her eyes. _Obviously._

Kit grinned at her, his laughing fit finally beginning to taper off. _Well, now you know._

 _At what_ cost _though,_ she shot back halfheartedly, grinning as well despite herself.

 _Oh, the usual,_ Kit said. _Just the wrath of one Martian princess and the rescue of two whole planets. No biggie.  
_

Nita punched him again, lighter this time. "So now what?" she asked quietly. _  
_

"Now what _what_?"

"You know," she said, shifting awkwardly. "What are _we_?"

"Partners in wizardry," Kit replied without missing a beat. "Who happen to be, uh . . ."

 _Friends_ — _and_ _more than friends?_ Nita asked, meeting his gaze.

 _. . . That works._

She grinned up at him, and he grinned back.

* * *

 _It was entirely my fault.  
_

* * *

 **A/N: Hope it was to your liking, ObeliskX! ^~^  
**

 **Thank you for reading! And remember: reviews give the author life!**


	2. Chapter 2

II. Fortune

* * *

 _"I'm in,"_ Dairine whispered, her hands hovering over the real-time model of the Wellakh sun in the hall of the palace.

Both Nita and Kit rolled their eyes, despite the seriousness of the situation. _"Dair,"_ Nita said wearily, "please spare us from any further awful jokes you might deem opportune. Thank you in advance."

Dairine spared a split second to lift her head and throw Nita a look of royal disregard. "Request _denied_ ," she said, her eyes trained on the flares and bursts of the sun in front of her. Nita groaned in despair, and Kit snickered in response.

"All right, team!" Dairine said brightly, pulling apart from the model and clapping her hands. "We've got the sun's energy tapped. I can't pull too much from it in one go, _so_." She laced her fingers together and placed her chin on top of them, eyeing her team.

Nita gave her a pointed look.

"Okay. Kit, you have to go to the coordinates I sent you. They're all buildings in major cities, and in them you'll see groups of Wellakhits. Your job is to raft them off. When you're describing the power source in the spell, you can just substitute in the characters I'll send you in a sec. Don't use any more energy at one time than what it states—the sun can't spare any more than that at one time. Oh, and between every rafting we'll give it, oh, ten to fifteen minutes to recover, yeah? _Yeah?_ Kit, are you even listening?"

"Yes ma'am. I was just trying to figure out where this peppy attitude suddenly came from," Kit deadpanned, raising his eyebrows. "I mean, it's not like you're normally _not_ bossy and demanding, but this is a whole new level of bossy and demanding. With a side of uncharacteristic optimism."

"Oh be _quiet_." Dairine waved at Spot, and the laptop rose from his place beside the sun-model and spidered over to where she stood, folding himself into a position that vaguely resembled sitting on the floor. "You got everything though, right?"

"Yep. So you're not helping with rafting or finding the kernel, I'm assuming?"

Dairine shook her head and gestured towards the globule of light in the center of the room with her chin. "Nah, Nelaid and I gotta keep my eye on this thing and make sure it doesn't do something crazy while we're working. Like scorching the other half of the planet." She laughed tightly, and for a moment her guise of concentrated ease crumbled around her.

Nita frowned.

Kit's mind touched hers. _I felt that too,_ he said.

"Anyhow, we should get working—I don't know how long it'll take for the sun to decide it doesn't feel like loaning power anymore, so we should get this done ASAP." Dairine took a seat on the floor beside Spot and opened up to his screen. "Neets, you should go start cleaning up the floods and looking for the kernel while Kit gets started on the rafting."

Nita nodded, mock saluting. "Yes, ma'am."

Dairine rolled her eyes. "All right, all right, now _go_ , please and thank you."

Nita grinned, shaking her wrist to grab hold of the transport charm on her bracelet. "Sure thing. And, ah, Dair?"

Her gaze met Nita's. "Yeah?"

Nita pointed a non-accusing finger at her.

"Don't worry too much, okay?"

Dairine let out a breath.

"I'll try." She grinned, lopsidedly. "See you on the other side."

* * *

Nelaid glided into the room, his gaze settling on the sun model before flitting over to meet Dairine's. "Shall we?"

She nodded.

* * *

 _She's gonna be okay, Neets._

 _I know, just . . . I'm_ _worried because_ she's _worried, you know?_

 _Yeah, I know. . . . She'll be fine. Dair's smart, and she's not new to this kind of thing. Not really. No, no, sorry, that came out badly. But she's got Nelaid's help, and_ he's _definitely not new to this._

 _. . . Mmm._

 _She's a wizard, Neets. She knows that every errantry comes with risk, and what's at stake, and all that._

 _You're right, I should have some more faith in her . . . but I can't shake off the feeling that something bad's gonna happen._

 _. . . That's not a premonition, is it?_

 _I don't know, but it doesn't_ feel _like one. I think. . . . Hm._

 _We handled Mars fine. We can handle Wellakh. Right?_

 _Mmm._

 _I'll see you after, all right? Gotta raft._

 _Right._

 _And, ah, Neets?_

 _Yeah?_

 _I_ — _uh. I just wanted to say_ —

 _. . ._

 _Kit?_

 _—Oh, never mind. Sorry. I'll see you soon, 'kay?_

 _. . . 'Kay._

* * *

Somewhere, along the horizon, Kit looked up at the sun from which they would take.

* * *

Somewhere, across the planet, Nita looked up at the sun from which she would hide.

* * *

The physical location of the kernel was simple enough to find: given the coordinates, Nita found herself in burning darkness, the bite of fire still strong in the air.

She blinked. Darkness on Wellakh: that was the last thing she'd expected to see.

And then:

 _Oh._

It had to be the burnt side of the planet: scorched and dead, a mess of withered twisted life-that-once-was. That explained the heat, and the shadow, and the lingering smell of smoke.

Nita checked her shield, made sure it was still up and running. Then, carefully, she lit a wizard's light, and lifted it to better see her surroundings.

It was a cave of some sort, she guessed. Walls rose up around her, enclosing a stone floor pitted and stabbed with stalactites and stalagmites, everything dusted with ash. Nita turned in a full circle, slowly, her eyes narrowed as she tried to see through the hazy air.

Something shifted under her sneaker. Carefully she lifted her foot, and her squint deepened into a frown when she realized that what she'd stepped on wasn't stone but a heap of ash.

 _A plant or something, definitely burnt by the Scorching . . . But in a cave? That's odd. . . . Bobo, you still here?_

The peridexis did not respond.

 _Huh._ Nita frowned at the pile of ash for a moment longer, then continued her slow circle.

Something closer to the center of the cave caught her light and her eye. She double-checked her shield and headed towards it, wizard's light drifting cautiously ahead of her.

It was a cluster of crystal, its spires reaching outward from the floor. Nita blinked, and held the light closer. Facets of the crystal flashed, its smooth surface uncluttered by the smoke and dust in the air.

Nita took in a sharp breath.

The stone was the precise color of the one Dairine wore around her neck.

 _The Sunstone_ , she'd said. _It was . . ._

Roshaun's.

 _Then, this . . . Is the source of that, or . . . ?_

Cautiously, Nita laid her fingertips on the crystal.

Her world plunged to white.

* * *

 _But she was not afraid_ —

—and somehow, that felt strange.

 _Bobo, are you there?_

 _. . ._

 _Kit?_

 _. . ._

 _Anyone?_

 _. . ._

Silence.

But still, she was not afraid.

Nita blinked—

—and the world

fell out

beneath her.

* * *

There was a single hazy point of dark gold light in a sky of black.

Nita stood facing it, somehow in this impossible somewhere, blinded by its flickering glow.

Or . . . was _she_ the light?

 _This has to be the kernel. Right?_

Her mind was elusively silent.

She closed her eyes, but the light remained.

 _That's . . . interesting._

Normally the way she'd go about this was to touch the kernel, but . . .

 _It's as if I_ am _the kernel . . ._

 _But that can't be. Can it?_

Cautiously she willed the light closer, willed it to drift towards her, willed it to connect.

 _I want to get to know you._

And the kernel connected.

 _Oh thank the Powers_ —

Silence.

* * *

Kit opened his manual to the voice messaging section, his eyes still trained on the crowd of Wellakhans slowly vanishing beneath faint blue light. Glancing down, he found Dairine's name and quickly left her a message. "Hey Dair! First group was successful, no problems, so keep doing what you're doing. Tell Nelaid he's doing great. I'll be at the second coordinate in eight minutes."

Her reply was instant. "The sun's responding in the way we hoped it would, so you keep doing what you're doing too. Nelaid says thanks, it's about time someone complimented his ability to manage me, ha-ha. See you in eight minutes."

Kit laughed quietly and tilted his chin upwards to the sky above. _I wonder if Neets will be able to hear me from here?_

 _. . . Might as well give it a shot._

 _Hey Neets, how's it going?_

Silence.

 _Oh well. She's probably busy with the floods and the kernel and whatnot . . ._ And then Kit smiled wryly at himself—because it had only been a few hours since they'd agreed to be _more than friends_ , and here he was, missing her already.

He glanced down at his open manual and waited for the five-minute mark that would activate the transport to the next coordinate.

* * *

The kernel was a storm, but Nita knew how to keep her head above water.

Mars had been loud, a keening that sought to be heard no matter how far she ran. Wellakh was silent, proud. It kept its pain and its fury behind a wall of stoic, determined calm.

But what troubled Nita was that she couldn't _see_ it: the intricacy of wires and loops and tangled knots that formed a kernel of a planet.

 _It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you. Would it be all right if I could see what you look like?_

Outraged disbelief slammed into her like a boulder, and she fought to push it off.

 _I'm sorry that you hurt, I really am. I know pain too, I know agony. I_ know _. Please, let me help heal you._

And slowly, by pure force of will and the help of the Speech, Nita persuaded the kernel to reveal itself to her: an intricacy of glowing wires and loops and tangled knots that formed the kernel of a planet.

 _Thank you._

She wasn't sure if that came from her, or from the kernel.

Once again she stood in the cave, the light from the floating kernel illuminating the now-dim crystal cluster and the dusty air around her. Relieved, Nita reached out and gently pulled the kernel and pulled it towards her to eye level.

Near its heart, a patch was missing. Gone. A gap, neatly torn from the kernel and dimming the glow of several loops. Cautiously Nita touched the faded wires, and they pulsed between her fingertips.

The kernel's pain shuddered through her, and she let go of them.

Nita frowned. Convincing a kernel to calm down or rewire itself was one thing—replacing a piece of it was another.

 _Maybe . . . I can convince it to heal itself?_

She touched the kernel again, taking care to avoid the broken-off strands. It trembled, but there was no pain.

Suddenly she _was_ Wellakh, in the way Aurilelde had _been_ Mars when she'd held its kernel. Nita _was_ its stone, its molten heart, its dusty air and its plant-life and its ruined half. She _was_ age, she _was_ growth, she _was_ time and life and death.

But then the pain struck, sudden and awful and leering.

She shuddered—

—and so did Wellakh.

* * *

Kit stood on the terrace, squinting at the crowd as they faded away. He wished he'd brought a thicker jacket—Wellakh's north pole was colder than he'd thought. And much, much dustier.

This time, Dairine sent him the message first. "Saw the drop when you pulled the power, so thought I'd get you first and let you know everything's good. We'll see you at coordinate three in eight minutes, so whenever you get this just go ahead and transport there if everything's good. If not, contact me and we'll sort it out. _Dai._ "

Kit smiled and glanced up at the sun. It was burning, all right—so far, so good.

 _I wonder how Neets is doing . . ._

Looking down, Kit set his manual timer to activate coordinate three's transport spell after eight minutes. Everything felt a little different, after the Mars incident. After the dream.

 _After we admitted it._

He wondered where Nita was, what she was doing. He looked over his shield spell, out of habit. He wondered if Nita, too, was checking her shield spell at that very moment. He looked up at the hazy sky and told himself to stop thinking about Nita, out of habit—and then realized, for the first time, that this was okay.

Kit stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and looked up again at the Wellakhit sky, grinning to himself a little.

 _. . . That works._

And that was when the planet shuddered.

* * *

In panic, only two words flashed through Nita's mind:

 _The kernel!_

On pure instinct, she dropped the tangle of light. Horror flooded through her as she realized, too late, the potential risks of dropping a planet's kernel—but it faded to relief when the kernel, rather than crashing to the dust, gracefully curved into one of the crystal spires. It hovered there: pulsing, silent, still a storm.

And she— _she_ was still in the cave.

 _Shield spell, shield spell_ — _Bobo, I need you now!_

Silence.

 _Bobo?_

Silence still.

 _I'll have to do it manually then_ — _!_

She reached out, fingers fanned over the pulsing circle of Speech characters—

—only to find them gone.

 _What?_

No—scattered flickers of blue light caught her eye. They were still there, swaying, barely visible, as though they were masked beneath a sheet of water.

 _Water?_

And again the words flew through her mind, quick and light:

 _Never-before-seen flash floods seen all over the planet_ —

— _spontaneous earthquakes even though tectonic plates should be dormant_ —

— _because of the Lone One's interference with the kernel._

And then, a memory tinged with scarlet and gold:

 _Fear death by water!_

Nita's eyes widened.

 _No. No! This can't_ —

I _can't_ —

 _Not_ — _!_

The shield spell collapsed.

* * *

His first thought was not, in fact, _I have to find Nita_. It was not _What in the Powers is going on_ , or even _How will Dairine and Nelaid deal with this?_

It was, in fact, _Get away._

 _Now._

 _Get away get away get away_ —

It was a good thing that Kit had prepped a transport spell if something like this happened—he'd figured that earthquakes would still happen even while Nita worked to settle them. Planets, he'd figured, were probably not always the solid reliable things humans often took them to be. And he'd figured right.

The spell took, and he found himself on Wellakh's moon.

* * *

The first thing he saw was Dairine.

But it wasn't quite Dairine—Dairine was not this frenzied, panicked creature that lashed out at everything that stepped too near, her eyes too wide and her face too pale.

She whirled in on Kit, and he knew he was a lost cause.

 _"Why isn't Nita here?!"_ she screamed.

Kit stared at her.

"She's— She's not?"

 _"No!"_ Dairine cried, and gritted her teeth. "I—" She made a keening sound of frustration. "She's. _Not. Here._ "

 _Nita?_

 _Nita, can you hear me?_

Silence had never been so loud in Kit's mind.

 _Nita._

 _Where is she?_

 _On the planet. Wellakh. On Wellakh. With the kernel. That's where Nita is._

 _Find Nita_ —

"She's on Wellakh."

Dairine stared at him, breathing too heavily, fists too tight.

 _The earthquake._

Its reality slammed back into Kit, a tidal wave of renewed panic. _I have to find her._

"I already looked up her coordinates a minute ago," Dairine said, her voice harsh. "She doesn't _have_ coordinates. Her messaging isn't working. It . . . I . . ." She moaned and put her face in her hands, dragging them down her face. "What do I _do_?" she wailed.

Somewhere in the still-functioning part of his mind, Kit realized that this situation was all too familiar.

 _Roshaun._

This had happened before, and it was happening again, and—

— _when will You stop taking from us?_

"We'll go after her," Kit said, reaching out and gripping Dairine's wrist. "We'll find her, okay? She—she might not have coordinates right now because she's working with the kernel. That's probably what happened. _Okay?_ " He shook her wrist a little.

Dairine nodded—still too pale, eyes too wide.

Calmly he found the coordinates of the kernel that Dairine had handed out. Calmly he laid them in a ready-to-fire transport spell. Calmly he watched as the circle of dancing blue fire set around him and Dairine, lively and bright and everything they were not.

His heart was still a storm.

* * *

"She can't be _here_."

They stood, hovering several feet above the ground, watching as the earth below them shuddered and rocked and tumbled in a furious tumult in the night of Wellakh.

The light from the shield spell lit a scorched landscape of giant's play: rugged ground littered with stone, dust, and lack of things that grew.

"She's here." _She has to be._

". . . Wait. Is that it?"

Kit raised his eyes to where Dairine was pointing. A pit of rocks was sunken in the ground, the same dark dull color as the land around it. It shook with the rest of the earth, terrifying and trembling.

He guided them closer, and looked down.

He could hear Dairine breathing uneven breaths.

"I can feel the _sun_ here," she said, disbelievingly. "It has to be the kernel."

 _Nita._

 _She's here._

"It's under the rock." Dairine's voice was crumbling with horror. _"It's under the rock."_

 _Nita's there._

"Then that's where we'll go," Kit said.

Dairine closed her eyes and nodded. He watched as her grip on Spot tightened, folded between her arms and her body.

"We need a spell to do that," Kit pointed out.

Dairine nodded again.

The strangeness of it collapsed over Kit, burning with terror. _This isn't Dairine._

"We need to make it, now."

She looked up at the sky. "All right."

"Can you borrow power from the sun, or . . . ?"

"I can."

" _Without_ scorching the other half of the planet?"

"Ha, ha." But it was empty and distant. "Yes, without doing that. It won't be anywhere near the amount I had to pull for the rafting, so."

Kit closed his eyes briefly. _Keep it together. We have to find Nita._ "All right, let's get started. Can you— Where's Spot?"

Dairine breathed in, and set the laptop down on the floor of the shield spell. As Spot unfurled himself Kit watched Dairine, who watched the tumult below, her eyes steely.

Already the ground was stilling. Faint light was beginning to rise over the horizon, boulders drawing long shivering streaks of shadow over the blackened earth: Wellakh's moon was rising.

"Spot," Kit said, his own voice sounding strange to him in this silent roaring storm. "Can you create a spell that'll get us below the ground without incurring physical damage?"

Kit glanced at Dairine. Her eyes were glazed with exhaustion, but still stone.

"Of course."

"And can you . . . Can you adjust it so that the spell automatically triggers a full shield spell when the spell doesn't sense any more solid earth? Does that make any sense?"

Spot eyed him, and it occurred to Kit that this sentient wizard's manual was, absurdly, the most calm and sensible individual of the three standing there at that moment.

"The power source will be the sun, as before?"

"Uh—yeah. Do you still have the settings for that?"

"Of course."

"Wait," Dairine said abruptly, and Spot's eyes turned towards her in what Kit could only call concern. "Make it so that the spell leads directly to the kernel."

Spot hesitated.

"I'll double check it, don't worry," Dairine said, and her eyes buckled ever so slightly. "And right now the most important thing is getting to Nita as quickly as possible."

With that whatever worries Spot had seemed to be eased, and he trundled over to her for inspection.

 _Nita's there,_ Kit reminded himself. _Down there.  
_

The planet tossed beneath them, a sea.

Dairine looked up. "Let's go."

Kit nodded.

The spell Spot had strung was simple, beautiful: if it had been for any other situation Kit would have admired it. But this was tinged with terror and horrified guilt, and so it was ugly.

It lowered them into the trembling ground, a shield spell meshed with a transport spell meshed with a pass-through-solid-objects spell. Simple and beautiful and ugly.

It would take them to Nita.

He felt the familiar strangeness that came with the separation of the atoms that was his body, and then the familiar relief as they came back together. Kit blinked and glanced down to check the shield spell, made sure it was still up and running. It was.

Next to him, Dairine murmured a few words in the Speech. Light began to shimmer on the edges of the shield spell bubble, illuminating their surroundings.

It was a cave. In the spell's dim blue light, everything had a soothing, undulating quality: stalactites and stalagmites were rendered wavering clouds, the stones and pebbles on the sand-dust ground a swaying sea floor.

 _A sea._

Kit blinked, frowning. Everything wavered and swayed, swayed and wavered.

 _A sea._

He looked at Dairine.

"The floods," she whispered, her voice hoarse with fear. "The earthquake must've . . ."

 _No._

"We have to find her," Kit said, too loudly. _"Now."_

"She has to be with the kernel," Dairine said, too desperately. "The kernel. We have to find the kernel, and—"

 _"Then where's the kernel?!"  
_

Far too loud, far too desperate—but he was not giving in, not yet not yet _not yet_.

Dairine closed her eyes, her lips thin. But it wasn't in fury: she looked, to Kit, more like she was about to create a sea of her own.

"It's _here_ ," she said quietly. "I can feel it. But _where_ —"

Dairine fell silent.

"—there," she said, and turned.

 _"Where?"_ Kit cried, whirling around.

Faint gold stabbed his eyes.

 _A sea, on this flame-ridden earth._

* * *

 _I was reckless I was foolish I was so_

stupid

stupid

stupid

 _stupid_

 _Stupid._

 _Why didn't I save her first?_

They stood there, hovering by Nita, surrounded by a sea that should not exist in a cave that should not exist on a planet that should not exist.

She was not moving.

Dairine was the first to move.

 _Why didn't I come back for her?_

 _Reckless foolish reckless stupid_ —

"We need to get her in," Dairine said distantly, "Now. Before—before anything else happens. Spot, is there a way we can expand the shield to include Nita without damaging her current physical state and without flooding our protection?"

He breathed in.

 _This first._

* * *

 _I'm alive.  
_

The thought wasn't so much of a shock as it was a pleasant surprise, a neatly-wrapped present handed to her at a time she least expected.

 _Okay, but . . . how?_

 _What happened?_

And then:

 _Where am I?_

It was an odd state that she was in: it was the floating surrealism of dreams, the warped brightness of the kernel. And yet she felt at ease, herself, alone, away. Strange, that in such dangerous territory she was _more_ herself and not less.

 _It feels like Timeheart,_ she mused, languidly. _Like nothing here can touch me . . ._

Something did.

She started, her soul turning— _But it can't quite be_ turning _if this isn't a physical state, can it?_ —to search for the source of the fleeting impression.

 _Who_ — _?_

The familiarity of it unsettled her, disturbed something nestled deep within her mind. Something stirred, and she grasped for it, stretching out to meet it halfway.

 _It worked,_ the familiarity cried. _It worked it worked it worked, she's okay_ —

 _Nita_ —

And the familiarity stuttered to a halting stop: there she knew.

 _Kit? Kit!_

She needed out. This was not Timeheart; _that_ illusion had faded; that she knew.

 _Neets, it's okay, you're alive_ —

She was going to die here: that she knew.

— _you're okay, hold on_ —

 _But why are you here?! You can't be here, it's not safe, get out_ — _!_

 _I can't, not now.  
_

 _What? What do you_ —

 _Neets, just trust me. You'll be okay, all right?_

 _Kit, wait_ _! What are you doing?  
_

 _You have to be okay. You, especially_ —

The truth occurred to her, but she fought against it. They would make it out of this one, too, wouldn't they? Wasn't that how it would always end? —that was what she had always known, that Fortune was with them.

 _Kit. Listen to me. You can't just_ —

 _I can. I have to._

 _No, you don't!_

 _Neets_ _—_

 _Kit, death for life,_ when it is right to do so! _When it is_ right— _and that is not now!  
_

The fear in his mind flashed through her own, and she felt and was and _knew_ his hesitancy. Still—

 _But you know why, Neets._

And she did; she had always known.

* * *

"You'll be okay," he breathed.

He did not say the truth they both knew.

* * *

She woke, and knew nothing.

* * *

 **A/N: _Does_ Wellakh have a moon? I have absolutely no idea. Similarly, many other liberties were taken with canonical details in this chapter; please do forgive the author. She was very short in spare time in this chappie's production, as much to her own distaste as to yours.**

 **THE AUTHOR DOES KNOW IT HAS BEEN LITERAL YEARS, AND OFFERS HER SINCEREST APOLOGIES.**

 **Anywho, do leave a review!**


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